


the altar of her touch

by ms_starlight71



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s01e17 E.B.E., Episode: s07e10 Sein Und Zeit, Episode: s07e11 Closure, Ficlet, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:55:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27639196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_starlight71/pseuds/ms_starlight71
Summary: msr ficlet, set around season 7, sein und zeit or closure
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 4
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

He stares at her the way he stares at the stars, hopeful and in awe, a legend on the tip of his tongue, ready to rectify the mysteries of the universe with the patterns his hazel eyes can find in the darkness. He is her undoing. The pads of his fingers trace the puckered skin on her abdomen. The warmth, a balm against the darkness, an antidote, a path to reclamation for a body used without her consent. 

She wonders sometimes if he is aware of how sacred these moments are. How rarely she gives away her touch. The Catholic in her knows that touch is a sacrament, reverent and true. She thinks she finally understands the phrase “fear of God,” for the need to kneel at the altar of this man shakes her to her core. But then he glances up at her, under those beautiful long eyelashes, and that knowing passes between them, the one they’ve shared over diners and desks and at the edge of the world. 

She tugs at the curl in his hair as he places soft kisses up her sternum.

“Mulder,” she murmurs. Tears threaten to spill over as he lays his head on her chest, lets her stroke his fine hair over and over. 

“Let me take care of you,” she whispers, hesitant, not wanting to push him away with too many words. 

He nuzzles once into the space between her breasts and takes her nipple into his mouth, sucking, gently at first, and then firmly as if she is his lifeline. He grasps the other in his hand, brushing across the surface of her, like he does against the small of her back, alerting her to his presence, a quiet reassurance.

He releases and looks up at her, eyes wide and searching. She wipes his tear with her thumb as it meets the mole on his right cheek. 

“Baby,” her voice gravelly. He is pulled from his reverie by the word she so rarely uses. 

“I’ve got you,” she insists. She lifts his hand from where it rests on her breast. Brings the tips of his fingers to her lips and kisses them one by one, running her manicured nails over his palm, memorized by the movement of its lines. 

She wonders if their lines run parallel to each other. Like twin planets in orbit, opposing poles, holding each other, each unaware that the other is responsible for their shared equilibrium. She wonders if he knows how sure she is of him. How although she’d never admit it, she’s confident she’d find him in every lifetime. 

The ache of loving him threatens to break her ribcage. Would keep him curled up safe there if she could. 

“Baby.” 

It slips from her lips, so softly he can barely hear it. He gazes at her, longing to memorize the way the shape of her mouth looks when she says it, the way her tongue darts out to lick her lips as punctuation. He might die in the space between waiting to hear her say it again. 

“Please,” he begs. She can feel his lower lip tremble as it reaches the underside of her breast. Her chest vibrates with his need. 

“Baby,” she moans. He wants to hear her say it with every inflection, tender, gasping, girly on a Sunday morning. He wants it tattooed on his chest, wants it to burn him and burn him until he is made new. 

She says it like a prayer, like an incantation. He believes in no god, but he has always been a believing man. In this, in her, in this ritual of communion. 

He presses another kiss to her ribcage and hears it reverberate from her chest to his soul like he is the church and she the song. 

“Mulder." Their bodies rise together.

“Baby,” she utters on the exhale.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a conversation between mulder and scully the morning after.

"It was me, Scully,” he murmurs. His voice scratchy. 

“Hmmm?” She fingers the tufts of hair that curve around his ears. That mix of sweat and tears that have settled into the pores of his olive skin.

“It was me,” he croaks into her bellybutton. 

“What do you mean, baby?” She asks. He doesn’t even bat an eye at the use of the word from her mouth. Just leans in farther to her touch. 

He looks up at her from her lap, his eyes as wide the UFOs he searches for in the sky. “I was the one who told my mother about Sam.” 

Scully feels her abdomen cave in beneath her ribcage. The weightlessness of grief her body only felt once before, when she saw the last of Missy’s life painted on her living room floor. 

She pets his hair once more. Traces the outline of his nose with her nails. Etches the distinct swirls of exhaustion under his eyes, the ones that plead like a child for absolution in the purple dawn of the sunrise. 

“I’ll never forget it, Scully. The pitch of her wail. The way she crumpled into my arms.” She wipes his tears before they reach his cheekbones. 

His breath hitches. “I was 12. I could barely lift weights let alone hold my grown mother.” She wants to rub her love into his skin, meld it into his DNA so he never forgets.

“It’s one of the few times I’ve felt the protection of my mother’s arms.” He pauses, a hiccup of a sob. “Except all I wanted was to be taken care of. To curl up in her embrace.” 

The doctor in Scully knows there’s no cure for this. No drug cocktail or alien implant that will heal the ache of not being loved by the one who should without question. 

After the initial shock of performing Teena Mulder’s autopsy settled, Scully hoped she’d find an answer. Would peel back the layers of Teena’s skin and find the source of her resentment. Unfold the maze of her intestines and discover the sentence scrambled between her organs. When she scooped out her uterus, she realized she was holding Mulder’s first home. This womb where Mulder’s nose scrunched up in that quizzical way for the first time. His fists seeking skin to latch onto. His lower lip puckering, preparing for his first cry. All she found was another woman’s body worn by trauma, beaten down by men who never saw her as more than a vessel for their own agendas. 

“I don’t think I really knew what it was like to be loved until I met you, Scully.” He stops, ponders his words and then shakes his head like a little boy. “I don’t mean I love you like a mother.” 

“I know, I know. Shhh.” She smooths the crease of his brow. 

“You protected me fiercely. Without question. Without hesitation. You loved me honestly.” He’s rambling now, the words tumbling out of him. 

“You know the moment I really first saw you, Scully? When you sat at your kitchen table with that fake photo of a UFO and you wouldn’t let me be led astray. You knew that the truth wasn’t worth it at the expense of my dignity.” 

She worries her fingers across his earlobes. Leans down to press a kiss to the indentation of his chin. 

Mulder chases her with his lips. And he doesn’t want to stop. “Will you let me show you, Scully? Will you let me show you how much I love you?” So tender and open. 

“Please,” she breathes.

_And she lets him._


End file.
